Planning for Indiana's Growth

2024 Integrated Resource Plan Quick Facts

Indiana’s energy needs are growing.

We’re meeting the challenge with additional, efficient power generation.

Relying on a balanced, reliable mix of energy sources
Proposing to modernize our Cayuga plant and expand its capacity by 470 megawatts

What is an Integrated Resource Plan?

It is a long-range plan for how a utility will meet forecasted demand for power from the customers they serve. Based on Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission guidelines, Indiana’s major utilities update their 20-year plans at least every three years. They show how they will fulfill their obligation to serve their customers with existing and future resources, including power generation and purchase agreements as well as programs aimed at improving energy efficiency and reducing peak demand for power.

Integrated resource plans are not final decisions, and they are not approved nor denied by Indiana state regulators. They cover a long time—20 years—during which circumstances change, and so resource planning is a continuous evaluation process. Before we request regulatory approval for a specific project in the plan, we assess a variety of factors, including current project economics, power demand projections, and evolving federal environmental requirements.

We invited the public to participate in our planning and share their thoughts. Over the course of eight months, more than 146 individuals representing 75 organizations participated in a five-part engagement series consisting of 10 public and technical meetings.

What is Duke Energy Indiana's latest plan?

The 2024 plan relies on a balanced mix of resources to accommodate a range of priorities, including: a growing demand for power; compliance with new environmental rules; and new planning requirements from MISO, the regional transmission operator for much of the Midwest.

The plan includes replacing some aging coal units nearing retirement with cleaner, efficient natural gas, co-firing some existing resources with coal and gas, and adding renewable power and battery storage to our resources. Importantly the plan adds additional, new power supply in Indiana, which the state needs. Indiana’s economy has been growing, particularly its industrial and manufacturing sectors, and with that comes a higher demand for electricity.

Cayuga Generating Station in Vermillion County, Ind.

While much of the plan is for later years, and each new project will be evaluated in detail at the appropriate time, the proposal for Cayuga Generating Station in Vermillion County makes sense to pursue now, regardless of any changes to EPA greenhouse gas rules.

Duke Energy’s Cayuga coal-fired power plant has been a key part of our Indiana generating fleet for almost six decades, making it the oldest coal-fired plant on our Indiana system.

As the plant’s units approach retirement, we’re looking at modernizing the plant with the most highly efficient gas turbines in the world and increasing its generating capacity by approximately 470 megawatts. Called combined cycle technology, the new units will capture waste heat that is normally lost from a gas turbine and use that heat to power a steam turbine, so we can extract more energy from the same fuel source. The Cayuga location has the advantage of existing, strong natural gas infrastructure and the ability to bring in additional gas supply to power an electric generating station. Major transmission lines already exist on site to transport electricity onto the grid, expediting our ability to add additional megawatts to the system.

This is not just about complying with new air emission rules, it’s about the river. Right now, we often can’t operate Cayuga at its full capacity during the summer hours when it’s needed most because of environmental limits governing the plant’s heat impact on the Wabash River where it sits. Continued operation as a coal plant would necessitate hundreds of millions of dollars to maintain an aging facility, as well as comply with environmental requirements, including new federal thermal impact rules.

Combined cycle gas units would resolve the river issue while also adding needed megawatts to the state’s electric grid. These units also can ramp up more quickly and respond to system needs, and their efficiency helps us provide our customers with more economic power generation. The approximately 1,400-megawatt plant would have enough capacity to power an estimated 1.1 million Indiana homes and would continue to be a critical source of power for the state and a major asset for Vermillion County for years to come.

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